The cricketers is a 1948

1948 in art

-Paintings:*Russell Drysdale - The cricketers*Rudolf Hausner - It's Me!*Henri Matisse - The Plum Blossoms*Barnett Newman - Onement I*Jackson Pollock - No...

 painting by the Australian artist Russell Drysdale

Russell Drysdale

Sir George Russell Drysdale, AC was an Australian artist. He won the prestigious Wynne Prize for Sofala in 1947, and represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1954...

. The painting depicts three boys set among the buildings in an empty town; two playing cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 and the other watching. The National Gallery of Australia

National Gallery of Australia

The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...

 describes the painting as "one of the most original and haunting images in all Australian art." The Sydney Morning Herald said the work is "possibly the most famous Australian painting of the 20th century."

History

The painting was commissioned by Walter Hutchinson, an English publisher, for his own collection, known as the "National Collection of British Sports and Pastimes". Looking for a picture of an Australian cricket match, Hutchinson asked his Melbourne office to commission a well-known Australian artist for this purpose. Leonard Voss Smith, an art dealer who often worked for Hutchinson, spoke to Drysdale who was then painting in the town of Hill End

Hill End, New South Wales

Hill End is a former gold mining town in New South Wales, Australia, in Bathurst Regional Council. It owes its existence to the New South Wales gold rush of the 1850s, and at its peak in the early 1870s it had a population estimated at 8,000 served by two newspapers, five banks, eight churches, and...

 in the Central West

Central West, New South Wales

The Central West region refers to the area west of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. It has an area of 63,262 square kilometers....

 region of New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

. Drysdale accepted the commission, worth £150.

When complete, Voss Smith sent Drysdale's work through to Hutchinson in England. Hutchinson was shocked, the painting was nothing like what he had expected. Immediately Hutchinson sent a telegram back to Melbourne, firing Smith. The next day Hutchinson reconsidered and rehired Voss Smith, after satisfying himself that Drysdale was a respected artist in Australia.

The painting, valued in 2004 at A$6m, is now owned by JGL Investments, a Melbourne-based investment company. It was last on public exhibition in 1998.

Composition and legacy

The painting was a departure from earlier artistic visions of Australia with a Sydney Morning Herald review noting "Drysdale’s large composition of 'cricketers' under leaden skies in the wide open spaces of burning sands dramatises the 'outback' as it has never been dramatised before." The National Gallery of Australia claim that the work "succeeds as art by abandoning any pretence to illustrative realism."

The model for the batsman

Batting (cricket)

In the sport of cricket, batting is the act or skill of hitting the cricket ball with a cricket bat to score runs or prevent the loss of one's wicket. A player who is currently batting is denoted as a batsman, while the act of hitting the ball is called a shot or stroke...

 was Teddy Woolard and Roy Holloway was the model for the bowler

Bowling (cricket)

In the sport of cricket, bowling is the action of propelling the ball toward the wicket defended by a batsman. A player skilled at bowling is called a bowler; a bowler who is also a competent batsman is known as an all-rounder...

. In 1996, after the models were identified, Woolard was asked for his opinion of Drysdale's portrayal; "I just don't rate it ... It makes us all look out of proportion."

The town of Hill End itself is not as desolate as shown in the painting, with a later visitor to Hill End remarking "Even the scattered buildings—so blank and menacing in The Cricketers—appear as if ripped from the cover of a chocolate box."